Speaking during a Senate hearing on implementation of the new federal education law, the head of the largest union in the country spoke about how awesome she thinks she is, as a way of explaining why senators should listen to her.
“I’m a really, really good sixth grade teacher,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, said Wednesday. “I give myself goosebumps. I’m amazing.” She then said she spent 13 years fighting against No Child Left Behind.
“I have about 14 hours worth of good advice to give you. They told me I have five minutes, so I’ll talk really really fast. Number one, and I cannot stress this enough: I am a really good teacher. You should really listen to me.”
Eskelsen Garcia was making the point that teachers’ unions should have been consulted more while Congress was debating No Child Left Behind in 2001. “I remember thinking to myself … ‘Did anyone stop to ask a working classroom teacher what might be the unintended consequences of high stakes testing on our most vulnerable students?’ like the students I was teaching.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
